How Smartphone Can Reduce Your Cognitive Power — Brain Drain Issues
“Excessive use of the digital media can create brain drain and imbalances in the 114 chakras in the human body.” — Sri Amit Ray
Are you aware that your smartphone can make you tired? It is right, that your smartphones enable and encourage a constant connection to information, and entertainment. They put the world at your fingertips, and rarely leave your sides.
In general smartphone usage have some beneficial effects and blessings. However, they can reduce your intelligence and mental power drastically.
Researchers noticed that people interact with with their phones an average of 85 times a day. This includes immediately upon waking up, just before going to sleep, and even in the middle of the night.
Brain Drain Hypothesis
Our cognitive capacity is vital for helping us learn, reason, and develop creative ideas. As a result, even a small effect on cognitive capacity can have a big impact, considering the billions of smartphone owners who have their devices present at countless moments of their lives.
This means that in these moments, the mere presence of our smartphones can adversely affect our ability to think and problem-solve — even when we aren’t using them. Even when we aren’t looking at them. Even when they are face-down. And even when they are powered off altogether.
Smartphone and the Amygdala
Our cognitive ability is known to be influenced by activity levels in the amygdala. There are two amygdala, one in each hemisphere or side of the brain. It is a structure in the brain classically associated with emotional processing. The amygdala can modulate our emotional stimuli and our working memory capacity.
Working memory and the Smartphones
The smartphone addiction is a major issue. Your “Working memory” area capacity of the brain reflects the availability of attentional resources, which serve the “central executive” function of controlling and regulating cognitive processes across domains. The smartphones gives excessive loads to these areas and create imbalances.
Moreover, the inability to inhibit the tendency to check for social messages can have a negative impact on the working memory and reduces efficiencies at work or university, motivation, and self-efficiency.
Brain Drain Experiments
Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention — as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones — the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity.
Final Thoughts
Although the smartphone devices have huge potential for blessings and to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. Researchers test the “brain drain” hypothesis and observed that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, as a result leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance.
